Someplace to stash all the words the voices keep pouring into my head.

Issues will be thrashed about. Social mores will be ignored. Drinks will be served.

schizohedron at optonline dot net

Monday, February 18, 2008

Building a Reputation a Second Time

A THOUGHT JUST OCCURRED TO me regarding the workplace into which I'll walk tomorrow.

With each of the departures in the past 3 months, a piece of the company's institutional knowledge of me has disappeared. I'm not talking about my skills and duties. I mean what the company knows about my personality, interests, work style, and the other sorts of facets someone's only going to absorb after extended interaction with me.

Aside from our artist (with whom I've enjoyed the same sort of personal conversations and detailed work discussions as I have with the three folks who've left) and my managing editor (with whom I communicate in techno-stutters in emails and every three weeks or so in our office, and even then I filter myself), tomorrow I will feel like I'm entering a neutron-bombed city.

I guess this isn't unique, considering other departments at countless other companies have dissolved like mine has, leaving only one or two veterans or wired-in survivors to tell the tales of the earlier generations. It's the first time it's happened to me, though. It offers a rare second chance to define myself again.